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Analytic Models Of Brown Dwarfs And The Substellar Mass Limit, Sree Ram Valluri, Shantanu Basu, Sayantan Auddy

Physics and Astronomy Publications

We present the analytic theory of brown dwarf evolution and the lower mass limit of the hydrogen burning main-sequence stars and introduce some modifications to the existing models. We give an exact expression for the pressure of an ideal nonrelativistic Fermi gas at a finite temperature, therefore allowing for nonzero values of the degeneracy parameter. We review the derivation of surface luminosity using an entropy matching condition and the first-order phase transition between the molecular hydrogen in the outer envelope and the partially ionized hydrogen in the inner region.We also discuss the results of modern simulations of the plasma phase …